The subject of the present invention is an alpine ski boot, the lower part of which comprises, at the front and/or at the rear, a kerb of standardized height intended to allow the boot to be held on a ski by a front binding and a rear binding.
Modern alpine ski boots are generally equipped, at the front and at the rear, with bearing plates which are attached and fixed to the lower part of the boot by means of screws, for example as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,214,865, the content of which is incorporated by reference.
Modern skis, known by the name of xe2x80x9ccarvingxe2x80x9d skis, that is to say skis the sides of which are somewhat curved so that they widen from the middle forward and backward, allow turns of uniform curvature to be made with ease. When weight is transferred onto the edges, the legs are quite steeply inclined sideways, which means that the boots, held by conventional bindings fixed directly to the ski, tend to touch the snow and therefore to destabilize the skier. In order to alleviate this drawback, it is known practice for ski binding elements to be mounted on a raiser plate. Such a plate is described, for example, in patent application EP 0 908 203, the content of which is incorporated by reference. This raiser plate does, however, have the effect of increasing the weight of the ski and of impeding the natural work of the ski in bending and in torsion.
It is an object of the invention to allow the boot to be raised up off the ski without the use of a raiser plate.
It is another object of the invention to allow simply the heel to be raised so as to increase the forward lean of the boot and therefore of the leg.
The ski boot according to the invention is one wherein the kerbs consist, over part of their height, of a part nonremovably secured to the lower part of the boot and, over the remainder of the height, at the choice or the user, of a removable kerb piece that can be fixed under the part nonremovably secured to the lower part of the boot or of a removable kerb piece that can be fixed on the top of the part nonremovably secured to the lower part of the boot.
The lower part of the boot may, for example, be part of the shell or an attached sole.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,065,228, the content of which is incorporated by reference (EP 0 933 034) discloses a ski boot equipped with removable and interchangeable pads at the front and at the rear so as to allow the sole of the boot to be adapted to suit various standards of binding, for example alpine ski bindings, snow boarding bindings or cross-country skiing bindings. It is not possible to raise the boot used with a standardized alpine ski binding.
When the boot according to the invention is used with the kerb pieces fixed under the parts of the kerbs which are secured to the lower part of the boot, the boot is raised up off the ski by an amount equal to the thickness of the kerb pieces. The height of the kerbs complies with the maximum height allowed by the standards. If the boot is used with the kerb pieces fixed on the top of the parts of the kerbs secured to the lower part of the boot, then the boot is liken able to a conventional boot.
The boot can be modified without further ado by the user.
The material of the lower part of the boot is generally the same as that of the shell of the boot and this material is generally polyurethane. By contrast, the kerb pieces may be made of a different material, or even of a multi-material complex exhibiting, in certain regions, a better coefficient of slip, which has the effect of making the binding easier to release in the event of a fall, and, in other regions, characteristics of greater adhesion, avoiding falling when walking.